


Veracious

by sarthij



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, I just love scar????, Ishbal | Ishval, Ishval Civil War, and he doesn't get like... any love from the fandom, and i really wanted to write this and its like 12 am lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11760807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarthij/pseuds/sarthij
Summary: He wonders if the mark, more than it is a battle wound, is an insignia of loss; Ishvallah Himself marking him as a grieving man.Scar: character study.





	Veracious

He hates the name that Military Dogs give him.

                “ _Scar”_

                He thinks it arrogant that those men would name him, that they think they hold that power over him. _Then again,_ he supposes, _these men have known nothing but power their whole lives_. He imagines his caricature of Amestrians, the one he’s formed in his head from supposition and experience, regressing into a baby, clutching onto its power by birthright. Its chubby, grubby fingers closing around the concept; he imagines the slow, cold smile creeping over a newborn face as it basks in its inheritance.

They named him Scar, referencing the “X” shaped mark that now mars his face _(“Not handsome like your brother’s,” his mom had once soothingly said, “but stern and honest. Beautiful in its simplicity. You’ll have no trouble finding a wife, my dear youngest.” His mom had pinched his cheek. He had batted her off, harrumphing like her words made no difference to him. But, secretly, he basked in her teasing, relishing her loving attention)._

 _Ridiculous_ , he thinks, _they mutilate me and then they use my disfigurement to hunt me down._ He remembers the falcons his cousin, Aaqil, used to train. An unusually cruel man, he’d trap them, train them brutally, violently, and then tag them by knotting coarse, scratching string around their claws. _Aaqil lost an eye when one of his birds flew free of its entrapment, attacked him viciously,_ Scar recalls. At the time, he’d thought Aaqil’s defacement was a tragedy, but now he thinks it was a lesson sent by Ishvallah Himself. For after that incident, Aaqil never harmed his animals again.

_(As he tightens his grip on a simpering, pathetic soldier, he imagines his fingers morphing into talons. Imagines that divine justice is striking again; this time on a bigger scale than a man and his birds.)_

_._

The night after he hears that he’s Wanted by the Amestrian government, he holes himself up in a small, abandoned shack in the outskirts of the East. He doesn’t try to sleep, knows it’d be fruitless. He, instead, considers the meaning of his new title.

His brother _(and he can’t even_ think _his name, it’s too painful and he’s strayed too far from what he knows is Good to pollute the name with his impurity)_ is the one who taught him Amestrian. He’d considered the language boxy, inelegant, foreign and distasteful, but his brother had insisted his views were just mirroring that of the Priests, their puritanical society. He’d boldly stated that _“my little brother_ ” wasn’t going to constrict his learning to only what the Priests deemed respectable.

One day, he’d come home battered and bruised, a red cut angrily bleeding through his ceremonial robes. The fighting had just started, then. The young Ishvalan girl _(Her name was Sa’eeda, he wants to scream)_ , had been killed a mere week ago. As his mother had tended to his wounds, his father had proudly spoke, “you, my son, will only grow stronger for this. Your wounds will heal and the skin will be tough as nails.”

His brother sat quietly next to his mother, watching her deft hands and glancing at his dictionary.

“Scar,” his brother had said quietly, in Amestrian.

“What does that mean?” he’d asked, wincing as his mother pulled a stitch tightly.

“It’s a mark left on your skin… when something doesn’t heal right.”

“Scar,” he’d repeated, tasting the word in his mouth.

His mother had patted him on his uninjured shoulder, absently. “You needn’t worry about that, my child. Don’t pull any of my stitches and you’ll heal marvelously, fully, and without any marks.”

.

Years and years later, he sits in a leaky shack, looking at a reflection of his own face. He traces the lines of the “X” carved into his skin, discolored and pale.

“Scar,” they’d named him.

He mouths the definition in time with his remembered brother.

He wonders if the mark, more than it is a battle wound, is an insignia of loss; Ishvallah Himself marking him as a grieving man. One line of the wound would represent his parents, his brother, his mentors, his life. The other line would represent his people, their land, their culture, all the bloodshed poured red hot into a thick, angry scratch on his face.

For all their arrogance, for all that he hates their audacity, the Amestrians had aptly characterized him, unknowingly perhaps, but appropriately still for their ignorance.

.

**Author's Note:**

> I Love Scar.


End file.
